3rds defeat league leaders Clyst St George by 7 wkts
Clyst St George: 111 (A. Stewart 5-13, D.Kururpa [sp?] 3-22)
Plymouth III: 112-3 (Ware 41, Mitsopoulos 35*)
Abbo won the toss and opted to bowl on a blustery day at Clyst's small ground. With one extremely short boundary, it was evident that tight bowling would be necessary to restrict Clyst to a modest total.
With the new ball, Reece served up a collection of liquorice, allowing the Clyst openers to get off to a flyer at 30/0. At the other end, Jack Hughes bowled, for the most part tightly, and was eventually rewarded with a skied caught and bowled dismissal to effect the breakthrough. At the other end, Reece picked up a wicket when a short ball was cut straight to Tristan's safe hands as he patrolled the point boundary. Danuka replaced Jack, and immediately continued exerting pressure from the top end, leading to another breakthrough- but the runs continued to flow from the bottom end, as Nigel was given the long-handle treatment.
It became clear that the Clyst batsmen were willing to throw the bat at anything wide of off-stump on the basis that even edges and mishits would carry for four on the short boundary. This tendency was brilliantly exploited by Abbo, who came on at the bottom end and used the wind to bowl hooping inswingers which accounted for 5 Clyst batsmen, as he caused a succession of batsmen to be bowled leg-stump (through a gate the size of the Bristol Channel) whilst seemingly attempting to smash the ball past cover. Wickets tumbled aplenty, with Reece Small picking up three catches in the outfield, as Danuka got in on the act at the other end, and Clyst were rolled for 111.
After an excellent tea, Clyst caused a few wobbles when the left-arm seamer Wotton cleaned out Andy Sewell's off peg with a jaffa, and trapped Vic plumb LBW with an inswinger to leave Plymouth at 6-2.
Tristan steadied the ship, and Andy Ware took the attack to Clyst by creaming a succession of boundaries in a flamboyant 41 which comprised 7 fours, 2 sixes, and one, lonely, solitary single. When Andy was caught at point (must've been tired from running that single), Dave Watson joined Tristan, and together they negotiated their way to the finish line at 112-3, both finishing unbeaten; Dave with about 20*, and Tristan with 35*.
All in all, a good victory. Good bowling by Abbo and Danuka was the catalyst, turning 80-3 into 111 all out, which set the stage for Andy and Tristan to finish the job. Some aspects of the performance will need to be improved upon, so let's not hide behind the substantial margin of victory in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of our own performance. Let's learn from our mistakes, so we can go out and win next week too.
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